A study by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” and published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that subscriptions to online pornography sites are “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality.”

No surprise there. It’s actually rather predictable. It’s just human nature that what is forbidden becomes more tempting. It’s the reason why conservative states have the highest divorce rates. It’s why some studies have shown that abstinence education might actually increase sexual activity. I suppose it’s even related to why the war on drugs is a complete failure considering the majority of the US population will use illegal drugs in their life.

Simply put, it’s about fear-fueled anger. But anger is not an idea. It’s not a plan. And it’s not a vision for the future. It is, however, the second stage of grief, right after denial and before bargaining.

The right is on the wrong side of history. The demographics of the country are rapidly changing, young people are becoming increasingly liberal on social issues, and rigid, dogmatic religious stricture is loosening its grip on the throat of our culture.

The right has seen the enemy, and he is the future.

Yeah. That has been my assessment for quite a while now. Demographics are destiny.

Lately I’ve been consuming as much conservative media as possible (interspersed with shots of Pepto-Bismol) to get a better sense of the mind and mood of the right. My read: They’re apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their “leaders” seem to be trying to mold them into militias.

Many have already noted the every increasing outrage on the right.

It is disconcerting that Christian fundamentalists and other rightwing extremists have been behind more terrorist incidents in the US than Muslims. But what bothers me even more is that all of this anger is so unfocused or somehow unclear. It doesn’t seem like many rightwingers are all that clear what they’re angry about and their anger too often seems misdirected. They have reason to be angry, but I’d prefer they quit attacking doctors, police officers, gays, and people attending churches.

Historical representations explicitly depicting Blacks as apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet a mental association between Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens implicitly associate Blacks and apes.

And …

After having established that individuals mentally associate Blacks and apes, Study 4 demonstrated that this implicit association is not due to personalized, implicit attitudes and can operate beneath conscious awareness. In Study 5, we demonstrated that, even controlling for implicit anti-Black prejudice, the implicit association between Blacks and apes can lead to greater endorsement of violence against a Black suspect than against a White suspect. Finally, in Study 6, we demonstrated that subtle media representations of Blacks as apelike are associated with jury decisions to execute Black defendants.

This may provide some context for considering the motives of the cartoonist and his editors, and for understanding the strong public reaction.

I don’t have much to say about this other than pointing out that this is more evidence of the subtlety and pervasiveness of racism.